Harry Potter and the Power of Love

Harry smiled to himself. Things had been going quite swimmingly over the sixth year, when he had developed shields against both the Cruciatus Curse and Avada Kedavra. Voldemort was quite frustrated at this point, and so was Draco, considering the fact that both had been making attacks on his life every day and were frustrated at every turn, as every time they would throw something at him he would just use the power of love to visualize a shield, and their attacks bounced right off harmlessly.

A long row of owls was stretching to the horizon. He swore there was an owl sitting in front of him directing the line - it had puffed out its chest and was wearing a small badge. If he had been willing to look closer, he would have noticed that it was a little prefect badge. Harry called this owl "Percy", for obvious reasons. Finally the prefect owl signalled the next owl in line to deliver the item clutched in its beak, and the whole row of owls slowly moved forward, twittering and hooting. A couple of wayward owls - it looked like Pigwidgeon and a couple of barn owls who were growing impatient - began to fight, but Fawkes began to sing, calming the little bird and its friends down. If Harry had bothered to look closely, he would have seen the owls crying and hugging each other and hooting morosely.

But he didn't, because the next owl dropped a small ring in front of him and flew off, after grabbing an Owl Treat from the large bucket next to him. Harry sighed, propped his feet up on the desk in front of him, and grabbed the ring. He felt a familiar tug behind his navel, and found himself in an entirely different environment.

The land stretched flat to the horizon, only punctuated by a few mountains here and there. There were no plants anywhere to be seen. Hermione would have told him that he was in a dry lake bed in the middle of Nevada, but she was otherwise indisposed, having her next scheduled fight and make-up session with Neville in approximately 20 minutes. To the horizon were all manner of bad guys - space aliens, rogue dictators, several dark lords, and a bunch of minions. There were super villains in tights and a cape (or whatever it was that super villains wore), large clusters of sentient bacteria, a few sentient mushrooms, and an immense mecha that was shaped like a monkey. Not to mention a couple of hundred thousand highly trained military troops and a few Arabic guys with a death wish. The amount of armament and pure evil directed at Harry was phenomenal, and any other person would have begun to make peace with their deity of choice within seconds.

But not Harry. He smiled to himself and focused on the power of love. The battle was short, because every time they would throw something at Harry, he would just conjure a shield to bat it away. Finally all of the assorted evil troops howled in frustration, and one by one, they wandered off bored. Harry burst into tears and used Fawkes to travel back to the head of the owl line, where Pansy, Neville, Luna, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, the entire Slytherin house (especially the cute little first years), the entire Gryffindor house, and all of the professors (excluding Snape), were all wiping the tears away and trying to hug Harry. Harry cried too, and after all of the hugging and crying and sniffling was done, everyone shuffled back to the bleachers set up especially for their use and waited patiently for Harry to defeat his next set of enemies. Harry was thankful Hermione had read about a tear-control system and set one up, as the tears were flowing down the collection eaves and splashing into the large tear reservoir sitting somewhere off to his right.

Being the Boy-Who-Lived was hell, but when you had the power of love on your side...

The next owl dropped a small lemon drop wrapper next to Harry, grabbed an Owl Treat, and left. The line of owls advanced a little. Harry sighed to himself and grabbed the wrapper, and he felt the familiar tug behind his navel...